If those barns could talk

By Jay Ashley / Times-News

Published: Friday, October 11, 2013 at 07:28 PM.

They’d tell you how warm it would get in that barn once it was fired, how cozy it could get to those who sat up all night to watch and regulate the heat. They’d tell you the stories they heard, from practical to outlandish, from unrepeatable to hilariously funny.

They’d tell you how, when the curing was done, the doors were thrown open so the leaves would “get in order” so they could be removed and stored in the pack barn for grading and prepared for market.

If you’ve worked in them, you can have fine conversations with these old barns, whether they’re dressed up or on their last legs. You merely need to stop and listen. Who knows, get one talking and it might never shut up.

If you can preserve that, more power to you.

Jay Ashley is managing editor of the Times-News. He pulls his row at jashley@thetimesnews.com

A preservation group is anteing up $100,000 to repair and stabilize “historic tobacco curing barns” in a couple of counties in Virginia and up in Caswell County.

“Barns eligible for grant funding must be tobacco curing or those that have been used during processing. They also must be at least 50 years old, or have historical and/or architectural significance,” according to the group. “Most of these barns need repair,” the announcement added.

You reckon?

I don’t know anyone who has used a wooden curing barn for that purpose in years. I have a friend who converted a barn to living quarters and another who lived in a pack house.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any old tobacco barn that doesn’t need repairs. If a farmer hasn’t used his barn in a half-century and it’s overgrown with kudzu or nearly falling down, he wouldn’t risk any money fixing it up again. In all honesty, what’s the point? With most of the world frowning on smoking, why preserve that heritage? To start raising crops again? Put up historic plaques? Give tours to kids who are simultaneously encouraged not to smoke, dip, chew or spit? I see falling tobacco barns on every country road in the state. They list and lean for years, then collapse under their own weight. They get covered with kudzu and all that’s left is a noticeable lump in the landscape.

What’s significant is not the architecture. It’s not the tin roof or the logs and chinking or the tier poles. It’s the character and culture of the people who filled up the barn with ripe tobacco and removed cured golden leaf. That’s the kind of preservation I believe in.

I can remember my father coming home one day with a small bottle containing tobacco seeds that reminded me of mustard seeds, seeds so small they could move mountains were they pellets of faith rather than commerce.

“This is what $100 buys,” he said as he held the bottle between his thumb and forefinger and shook it.

One hundred bucks for that? Why, you could lose that little bottle in the watch pocket of your Red Camel overalls.

When I was coming along, tobacco barns were as common as fence posts. Lots of people gained their livelihoods from tobacco farming. Tobacco paid rents, bought clothes and food, sent kids to college so they could get an education and not have to live summers suckering tobacco plants and autumns following a horse through narrow rows during harvest.

If those old barns could talk they’d tell you how the men in the neighborhood would converge to build them and perhaps even saw up a load of slabs for a first curing. They’d tell you how the planks were planed and the tin roofs vented. They’d tell you how those long tier poles were shaved down by hand.

They’d tell you about the children who handed the leaves and the women who tied them onto sticks and the young boys who counted sticks and made piles of the tobacco for hanging in the barns at the end of the day. They’d tell you the gossip shared, the boyfriends talked about, the songs or the kidding and joking and picking and hurrying to get the sledful of leaves onto the sticks before the next load arrived from the field.

They’d tell you about the men — and the boys who wanted to be men — who pulled the leaves, placing them in sleds pulled by horses and mules. They’d tell you about about chilly, dewy mornings when the primer wanted to root down under a quilt instead of getting up in the dark to hitch up a horse and head into a wet field to work. Even the sun took its own sweet time to rise and stretch and get warm enough to burn off the dew. It could be mid-afternoon before the workers’ shirts or pants or dresses were completely dry.

They’d tell you how before the first curing of the season proper scouting of the barn was required to clear the barn of active wasps’ nests and black snakes who had left their shed skins behind. They’d tell you how all the workers would form a chain, passing the sticks of tobacco from nearby piles to the already knee-walking primers, tired from the field, who scrambled up the tier poles to hang the heavy sticks. You could hear them call out for “dry tobacco” to be sent up to finish filling out the room so they wouldn’t get soaked and slapped in the face again by those wet, morning pullings.

They’d tell you how warm it would get in that barn once it was fired, how cozy it could get to those who sat up all night to watch and regulate the heat. They’d tell you the stories they heard, from practical to outlandish, from unrepeatable to hilariously funny.

They’d tell you how, when the curing was done, the doors were thrown open so the leaves would “get in order” so they could be removed and stored in the pack barn for grading and prepared for market.

If you’ve worked in them, you can have fine conversations with these old barns, whether they’re dressed up or on their last legs. You merely need to stop and listen. Who knows, get one talking and it might never shut up.

If you can preserve that, more power to you.

Jay Ashley is managing editor of the Times-News. He pulls his row at jashley@thetimesnews.com